Lectu-wha?

As Loughborough is in Britain (Mercia, not 'Merica), I am a lecturer in the traditional British sense of the word – see for example Wikipedia. Hence, my responsibilities include not only teaching, but also research and enterprise (roughly, bringing science out into the world); and my position is the entry level of the promotion ladder that continues with senior lecturer, reader, and professor.

Most importantly, this position should not be confused with those lecturer positions from overseas that have teaching as their main or only responsibility.

I have been told that this is comparable to a tenured assistant professor in the US system (but as my experience with that is only second hand, I cannot comment on that). While some people I know compared the role to an Akademischer Rat in the German system, I think that a better comparison is a permanent Juniorprofessor (“permanent” as in “permanent contract”, hopefully not as in “will never be promoted”); mainly as a permanent Akademischer Rat usually has a much higher teaching load.

Of course, the qualifiers “permanent” and “tenure” come with the caveat that academic positions in the UK are not as permanent as (for example) Beamte in Germany (you can get fired if you “underperform”). And, of course, I still have to reach the end of my probation period (but the requirements for that are nicer than what I have been told about tenure; probably also because it is much simpler to fire people).

In conclusion, comparing academic roles on an international scale is hard, and tempts one to use ill-fitting analogies.